Top 55 Leigh Whannell Quotes

Somewhere in the ’80s during the home video era something happened and horror started getting more and more marginalized and thought of as schlock.

Horror film fans are pretty starved for quality. If you do something thoughtful or if you make something good, they’re so thankful for it.

If you have a year where a few good horror films come out, all of the sudden, horror is back and everyone’s talking about how it’s a vintage year for horror.

The writing process is the time where nothing’s been set in stone. It’s a blank slate, or a blank page.

Usually with me, the ideas I have for movies just sort of pop into my head. I’ve read a bunch of screenwriting books over the years and, to be honest, they’re mostly pretty crappy.

The problem with acting is that there’s really no control. You’re at the behest of others.

I mean I met James Wan at film school. That’s where we met. I didn’t go to film school to find someone else to work with. I was thinking I would go and learn to direct and go and be a director like everyone else at school.

After ‘Saw,’ we got offered every horror remake under the sun, and I was just always thinking, ‘I don’t see how this could be interesting for me.’

Saw’ definitely had an edge to it that wasn’t American.

One of our film lecturers, one of the guys teaching the course, said to the departing film class, ‘No one in this room is going to make it, as a filmmaker.’ I have no idea why he said that.

When I was a kid, ‘Robocop’ to me was just good guys and bad guys.

One of the most crucial aspects of a haunted house movie is the fear and disbelief of the characters, because they don’t know what’s happening to them.

I do try and keep my scripts quite economical.

I always want to fulfill genre expectations and think that should be the bedrock of any film – then you can layer in thematics.

I mean, I certainly wouldn’t want to paint myself as, you know, the evangelist for practical effects or some sort of anti CG guy because it’s really a tool. Like filmmaking is this toolbox and you use what’s appropriate in relation to the story.

The good thing about directing a screenplay that you’ve written is that you see the film in your head as you’re writing it and then you see those decisions through to the end.

When I directed the third ‘Insidious’ film I loved it so much that I decided this is what I want to do from now on. I don’t even think I would write something as a screenplay now with no intention of directing it.

I always say that the horror genre and the comedy genre are close cousins because they are the two genres where you are attempting to elicit an involuntary vocal response from a crowd of people and you instantly know whether it’s working or not.

You never meet other screenwriters because it’s such a lonely profession.

I feel like if you boil supernatural ghost films down to their core essence, they’re really about death.

Once I have a story idea I like it doesn’t even matter to me what genre it is, I’m just so happy to have one.

Upgrade’ was a hard one to make.

I think the way to create a lot of terror in a haunted house film is to have a bunch of people who have no idea what’s happening to them, and you sort of live the movie through their eyes.

The great thing about ‘The Exorcist’ is it’s dead serious horror. No comedy, no self-reference, it’s a documentary style.

I’m the opposite of the actor that is bursting with confidence who just knows they’re going to make it. I’m the guy who’s like yeah, probably, it won’t happen.

I think, what happened with ‘Dead Silence’ is that other people told us that we should be doing that and now that I look back, I realize, ‘should’ is not a word that comes into an art. It’s whatever you’re feeling like doing.

I’ve actually written a children’s film called ‘The Myth,’ which you could say is like a big ‘Harry Potter’-esque fantasy for kids, and that’s a film I would love to see get made. That’s a dream project of mine.

You know you’ve have a good idea when you’re lying awake at night going ‘someone else is going to take it, I just know it!’

I’d always had this romantic idea, ever since I’ve been writing scripts, that I would travel one day and pull up stumps, as we say in Australia. It’s a cricket reference. You can Google it. Pull up stumps in some country like Italy or Spain and do my little Truman Capote thing.

A lot of the fear about being a first-time director is just starting with a completely blank slate and thinking: ‘Is this going to connect with anybody?’

I found myself in this conundrum of loving acting, but not liking the path that you have to take to do it. I was just never good at auditioning, so basically I decided I would just write my own stuff and if I could get a role in it, then fine.

I think that’s the problem, when you’re a young filmmaker and you’re starting out, you don’t know people, you’re easily lead, you don’t know the right people to talk to, you really need guides.

You know, by the time you get to the fourth film in a franchise you’re really mining for something different. You’re really looking for a way to go about things that the audience hasn’t already seen.

The great thing about horror films is that they work on a low budget. The genre is the star. You don’t need big movie stars, and I actually think a lot of times that the best horror films are the low budget contained ones.

I don’t know if I can see myself writing another ‘Saw’ film. It’s such a special part of my life, and I almost don’t want to ruin it by going back.

You can’t compare David Cronenberg’s ‘The Fly’ to the older version.

Any movie that deals with an AI computer voice stands in the long, long shadow of ‘2001.’

Every now and again, something will pop into my head when I’m driving or I’m in the shower, you’ll just get an image and it stays with you. It doesn’t have to be much, it doesn’t have to be a story, it could just be an image. But it won’t leave your head and that’s when you know you’ve got something.

For me in a horror film, just looking down a long corridor and seeing somebody standing there, the simplest thing in the world, has a really seismic impact to me.

I couldn’t believe that people went to see ‘Saw,’ that people actually lined up.

I grew up in Melbourne.

I think true connectivity is something that is rare in sequels. I mean I love the first ‘Die Hard’ film; you won’t find a bigger ‘Die Hard’ fan than me. But I feel like with the sequels, they’re just taking that character and dropping him in different scenarios. There’s no real connective tissue.

Well you know, the big trick with ‘Saw,’ the sleight of hand that you have to pull off is that – spoiler alert – the bad guy, the antagonist, is right there in front of your face, literally.

I really liked that documentary, ‘Room 237.’

Creating ‘Upgrade’ was really something I enjoyed even though it was stressful. I would do it all again.

I think repetition is the hardest thing to avoid with sequels, because you’ve told a story and now you’re adding more story to the story.

If I’m going to live in Sydney, I want to live on Bondi Beach.

If you look back at a film like ‘Dawn of the Dead’ – You can either watch it as a straight-up genre film and have fun with zombies being shot, or you can look at it as a metaphor for consumerism. Or a metaphor for the Vietnam war.

The thing I love the most about low budget films is the creative freedom.

Australia, most of the filmmakers there write a film and they direct it. There’s a lot of writer/directors there, because nobody wants to write a script and then let it go when they’ve had that much of a personal investment to it, because you’re not getting paid huge amounts of money in Australia to direct.

A lot of low-budget genre films you see are horror movies, because horror is the friendliest movie to lack of money.

Supernatural films allow you to bend the rules of time and space – that’s really fun, especially for screenwriters who often get shot down for logic reasons.

When you sit down to write a film, you direct it in your head. If you are writing a scene, you are watching the scene. And maybe it’s different when you are writing a novel because you are thinking of it in terms of being read. But films are only consumed one way – through the eyes and the ears.

I’m still a big believer in movie theaters, and going to see movies in public.

I don’t think humor is something to be afraid of.